Only Roses
by Tori Angeli
Summary: Michelangelo and Raphael crash a concert hall while drunk and are surprised with what they find.  Rated for mature discussion.


I had never seen an opera before, and I was getting a weird first impression. 

Yes, technically, this was an operetta, I could hear Donnie saying it in his know-it-all kind of tone like some kind of reptilian C-3PO. The poster on the wall outside the concert hall had said something about Simon and Garfunkel, or Rogers and Hammerstein, or something. It was written by two people, anyway. It was also full of characters with names like Despard Murgatroyd (I remember that one because I told Raph it sounded like the name of a drink, and he didn't think it was funny). It even had a woman who was pledged to everlasting virginity (Raph had snorted at that one).

We were _in_ the concert hall because we were drunk. That about sums it up. Raph and I had gone to Casey's and gotten raving drunk in the middle of the afternoon, just for the heck of it. This had led to us watching _Elf_ (nothing else could have made Raph watch it, he hates stuff like that). But after we left Casey's, we were like, what do we want to do now? 'Cause, I mean, it's not like we wanted to go back to the _lair_. It was still like eight, way too early to be this drunk, and Leo and Don would still be up, and we didn't want to hear them go on about how we shouldn't do this.

So I said, "Why don't we go buy ten cents worth of gas and pay with a check?" I've always wanted to do something like that, but Raph said I was being an idiot, 'cause we didn't have the car, or a checking account, and we couldn't just walk into a gas station. Well, we were passing by a concert hall, and I said, "Let's sneak in there!" And the poster talked about some opera—operetta—with a really crazy kind of name, and I said I'd always wanted to see an opera, so we snuck in through a second-story window and hid in the shadows on the top level of the balcony. No one was sitting there, since everyone who'd bothered to attend had bothered to pay for a better seat.

MST3K time.

Right now, there was this crazy woman walking around and rolling her eyes, alone on the stage, and people in the audience were laughing. Apparently, this was one of the funny ones.

"Dude," I said to Raph, "do these crazy chicks in opera and stuff ever…not be?"

"Wha'?" He looked at me like I'd grown lips.

"I mean, operas and stuff, they always have crazy chicks."

"You never seen an opera before."

"The poster said this is'n OP'RETTA!" I said the last word really loudly, and Raph grabbed my head and made me duck behind the seats in front of us as people turned around to look.

"Shhhh! People'll hear you!" Raph wasn't a lot quieter than I was.

"Operetta, dude. There's a difference."

"Like what?"

I paused and I thought, and I didn't really know. "I don't really know. Um, where was I?"

"I forgot."

"Me too." I plopped my head on his shoulder in despair. "I hate forgetting what I was gonna say! We were talkin' 'bout…"

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "Dunno."

"Somethin' t'do with…"

"F'geddit."

Maniacal laughter resounded from the stage. "Crazy chicksh!" I remembered louder than I should have, head popping up from his shoulder.

"Shhhh!" Raph wasn't the only one who said it this time.

"Yeah, they're cool," I said happily.

Raph glanced over the back of the seat. "This one's...pretty messed up," he told me, retrieving his arm and clasping the back of the seat with both hands.

The music from the orchestra pit became a little more contemplative as the crazy lady continued her chattering. I peered over the back of the seat in front of me. "Y'know, that nightgown they've got her in's real thin. I think I can see her—"

"Yeah, me too."

"I _llllike_ opera." I grinned. Raph grinned, too, but didn't reply, eyes affixed on the stage. I frowned. He wasn't paying attention to me. People should always pay attention to me. "Dude!" I hissed. "She's not that hot!"

But Raph wasn't even listening. The grin was fading, slowly replaced pixel by pixel with a look of real concentration. It wasn't the same concentrated look he had when he was looking at porn. It was the kind of look he got when someone was talking about something really important and he knew it. I glanced back to the stage, and the crazy lady had knelt in the center, all the lights dimmed except the pale halo surrounding her, washing out her color. She looked like a ghost, and for once, she seemed almost sane. She sang, and her voice was…amazing. She sang, and time stopped, the music moved beneath her voice like waves bearing a ship over a calm sea. She sang, and she was beautiful.

_To a garden full of posies  
Cometh one to gather flowers,_

It was kind of weird how she pronounced "posies" like "poses." I figured it was some sort of British thing. She was singing with a British accent, after all.

_  
And he wanders through its bowers  
Toying with the wanton roses,  
The wanton roses,  
Who, uprising from their beds,  
Hold on high their shameless heads  
With their pretty lips a-pouting,  
With their pretty lips a-pouting,  
Never doubting, never doubting  
That for Cytherean posies  
He would gather aught but roses._

The melody was fluid and simple, and I couldn't believe she had been so comically crazy before. Maybe it was the tequila, or maybe not, but I was absolutely blown away by her. Stunned to sobriety. I glanced over at Raph to see if this was having the same effect on him. It wasn't. His face had changed from concentration to surprise—actual surprise. I didn't see that on his face very often. He was surprised. Why?

The woman continued.

_In a nest of weeds and nettles  
Lay a violet, half-hidden,_

I was tempted to look back at the stage for a moment, but I became more fascinated with Raph's changing expression than I had been with the singer. His eye ridges lowered, but his eyes were still as wide with surprise as before. He looked halfway horrified, like he was witnessing the most agonizingly beautiful car crash he had ever seen.

_Hoping that his glance unbidden  
Yet might fall upon her petals,_

I whispered his name inquisitively and instantly regretted it, because suddenly his expression evened out. Still, lingering in the recesses of his eyes was a surprise, admiration, and apprehension that I couldn't quite pin down the reason for.

_Upon her petals.  
Though she lived alone, apart,  
Hope lay nestling at her heart,_

Raph flinched a little there, but only briefly, so briefly that it was there and gone, no trace of it left.

_  
But alas, the cruel awaking,_  
_But alas, the cruel awaking  
Set her little heart a-breaking,  
For he gathered for his posies…_

The music paused, and he was still as a marble statue until the next note of music arched over the balcony seats from the contralto's golden throat.

_  
Only roses._

He leaned forward, lips parted slightly, and I could hear the breath hissing in and out of them.

_Only roses._

The music floated like a feather into stillness. All was so silent that I did not breathe for fear of breaking it. Then, applause.

No one clapped harder than Raph.

* * *

The next morning, I went online and did some searching. Two weeks later, April came down to the lair with a package and told me to stop sending stuff to her apartment without telling her. That evening, Raph came into my room, holding the item I'd left on his bed: a CD of Gilbert and Sullivan's _Ruddigore_. I grinned at him, expecting a good review of my thoughtfulness.

He held up the CD and gave me a dirty look. "What's this?"

My grin faded. "Um, the opera we saw?"

"What made you think I wanted a damn opera recording?"

Oh no. "You seemed to like that one song the crazy lady sang."

Raph paused, eyes snapping toward the CD for a second, then back to me, irritated again. "I was checking out her nipples. I don't need your damned CD." With one last dirty look in my direction, he walked out and closed the door hard behind him.

He was lying. You couldn't see her nipples from the balcony.

And he kept the CD.

* * *

Author's Notes: Well, this was a weird little piece. It was late at night when I wrote it, and I was under the influence of a sleep aid. Anyway, this scene in the actual operetta is totally a parody of theatrical madness, but out of context, the words are really quite moving (in-context, they sound deliberately pretentious). I figured if Raph and Mikey were barely paying attention to the rest of the opera, they would be quite caught up in that little aria. It's really very pretty. 


End file.
